Bad Times Story

Posted: Tuesday, May 30, 2000
By: Darren Schroeder

Creator: Athonk
Publisher: Self Published
Address: Sosrowijayan Wetan Gt. 1.77, Yogyakarta, 55271, Indonesia.

Dating from 1994 this collection of reprints is a quick, surreal read. In it three little devils, called the Black Holes, get swallowed by a shark who turns out to be an angel in disguise. The Blackholes end up on an island which is covered with giant Salvador Dali heads.
The artwork is frenetic, as is the the lettering which gives a great range of text styles. It's all great fun, apart from a long winded essay by some PhD who gives us a in depth analysis of the story and the role of this comic in light of the oppressive censorship of Indonesia at the time. The claim that this is a ground breaking radical statement concerning everything that is bad in Indonesia made me scratch my head and wonder if they had read the same comic. For me it is a fun comic that was worth spending time reading.

In a word: Energetic.

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